Jan 29, 2005

Rummikub

I'm a big fan of games, and the latest one I tried is called Rummikub. Each player starts with 14 tiles, and each tile has a color and a number. The colors are red, green, blue and orange, and the numbers range from 1 to 13. The objective is to discard your tiles by organizing them into groups that are either all the same number (but different color) or ascending numbers (all the same color). So far, it sounds a lot like the card game Rummy. The big difference is that you can refactor the groups that have been created in order to create new opportunities. For example, if there is a sequence of blue tiles numbered 1..6, you could break it into the sequence 1..3 and the sequence 4..6 and the discard another 4 on the end of the new 1..3 sequence. It isn't as hard as it sounds, but once you start getting the hang of it, you're always wondering whether there are complex rearrangements of the existing patterns from which to discard your last remaining tiles. Highly recommended!

We always played by allowing the first person wiht a set, (3 of the same number in dfferent colours, or a runin the same colour, 2,3,4)
to begin the game.
To insist you have to have 30 points makes the game boring. I sat through a whole game before I got 30 points, also younger children would find this rule hard. Remember, this is a real fmaily game.

Rummikub is one of my favorite games! Having the initial 30 points can be tedious, but also awesome. At times, my tray has been completely full with of what I call tiddly-winks (small tiles). Finally, you get a break and you can come close to clearing the whole tray.

As for smaller children, I've played with young childern. Its great for building math skills, and patience.